[sw-l] Sign Variants via SWML

[Dan Parvaz]

> The "variants" idea is rather like the "stemming" features of some word
> processors (which enables them to tell that "walk, walks, walked,
> walker, walking" are all, in a sense, the same word).

Of course, with signing there is a higher price to pay, due to the imagic
iconicity of the signs. So a sign like ASL GIVE, which is an agreement
verb with respect to giver (starting point), recipient (endpoint) and even
thing given (change in handshape) will have a large number of variants,
not including temporal aspect, which can introduce a combinatorial
explosion.

It'd be nice to come up with some devices (finite state tranducers,
implemented in XSLT/XPath?) to handle the more regular morphophonology.
Next paper, I believe... :-)

-Dan.